IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/jleorg/v32y2016i4p816-839..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

School Consolidation and Student Achievement

Author

Listed:
  • Monique De Haan
  • Edwin Leuven
  • Hessel Oosterbeek

Abstract

What is the effect of school consolidation on student achievement? Theory gives little guidance because possibly positive effects from larger school size can be offset by negative effects from reduced choice and competition. We investigate these issues empirically by analyzing the effects on students’ achievement of a consolidation reform that took place in Dutch primary education in the mid-1990s. The reform was implemented by increasing the minimum required school size, leading to an increase in actual school size and a reduction in the number of schools. For identification, we exploit variation between municipalities. We find that an increase in the minimum required school size of 10% has a small positive effect on student achievement of 0.72% of a standard deviation. Further analysis indicates that this effect can be mainly attributed to the increase in actual school size; reduced competition and choice do not seem to have harmed student achievement. We also find no evidence that the consolidation effect is driven by reduced school segregation or the elimination of small schools that were—given their size—underperforming (JEL I21, I22, H75, D40).

Suggested Citation

  • Monique De Haan & Edwin Leuven & Hessel Oosterbeek, 2016. "School Consolidation and Student Achievement," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 32(4), pages 816-839.
  • Handle: RePEc:oup:jleorg:v:32:y:2016:i:4:p:816-839.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/jleo/eww006
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Dieter Verhaest & Stef Adriaenssens, 2022. "Compensating wage differentials in formal and informal jobs," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 75(1), pages 106-126, February.
    2. Crocker H. Liu & Patrick S. Smith, 2023. "School quality as a catalyst for bidding wars and new housing development," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 51(4), pages 785-818, July.
    3. Taghizadeh, Jonas Larsson, 2020. "Effects of school closures on displaced students and future cohorts," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(C).
    4. Taghizadeh, Jonas Larsson, 2020. "Are students in receiving schools hurt by the closing of low-Performing schools? Effects of school closures on receiving schools in Sweden 2000–2016," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    5. Holmlund, Helena & Böhlmark, Anders, 2019. "Does grade configuration matter? Effects of school reorganisation on pupils’ educational experience," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 14-26.
    6. Vinitha Varghese, 2022. "Impact of school consolidation on enrolment and achievement: Evidence from India," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2022-150, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    7. Beuchert, Louise & Humlum, Maria Knoth & Nielsen, Helena Skyt & Smith, Nina, 2018. "The short-term effects of school consolidation on student achievement: Evidence of disruption?," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 65(C), pages 31-47.
    8. Astrid Marie Jorde Sandsør & Torberg Falch & Bjarne Strøm, 2022. "Long‐run Effects of Local Government Mergers on Educational Attainment and Income," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 84(1), pages 185-213, February.
    9. Koussihouèdé, Oswald, 2020. "Primary school size and learning achievement in Senegal: Testing the quantity–quality trade-off," International Journal of Educational Development, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).
    10. Oskari Harjunen & Tuukka Saarimaa & Janne Tukiainen, 2021. "Love Thy (Elected) Neighbor? Residential Segregation, Political Representation and Local Public Goods," Discussion Papers 138, Aboa Centre for Economics.
    11. Zhao, Yu & Du, Hui & Li, Rui & Zhou, Guangsu, 2024. "The long-term influence of education resources allocation on the migration: Evidence from the China’s rural school consolidation policy," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(C).

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • I21 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Analysis of Education
    • I22 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Educational Finance; Financial Aid
    • H75 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - State and Local Government: Health, Education, and Welfare
    • D40 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:jleorg:v:32:y:2016:i:4:p:816-839.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/jleo .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.